Tag: Oliver Chesler

I had a great time speaking on the “Geek Out” panel at this weekends IMSTA FESTA. The event put on by Shocklee has pro-audio companies show their stuff in different recording studios at SAE Manhattan. As I approached the street entrance a young guy stopped me and asked if I would buy one of his hip-hop CDs. I was surprised because I didn’t think I looked like a good target audience for him. I asked if he was coming inside and I was surprised again when he told me he had no idea what I was talking about. I let him know he should come up and there would be producers, djs and lots of stuff to check out. He looked a bit afraid and I got the idea he was probably 15 years old or so. Anyway I went in without him and wondered if there was anything at all on the CDs he was trying to sell.

On the 9th floor of SAE there were about 10 security guards in the halls. Once I meandered into the recording studios I knew why: there was lots of nice equipment inside! Immediately I ran into Fady Hayek who is the National Sales Manager for SSL. I was a regular at the Club Cubase meeting he ran when he worked for Steinberg in the 90s. James Bernard had a nice audience watching him go through some amazing tricks and tips with Reason and Record. I love watching him demo stuff. He really gets the software, knows the shortcuts and makes you want to run home and do it yourself.

In the VIP room I met Peter Kirn (Create Digital Music) for the first time face to face. We spent some time thumbing through the latest Keyboard Magazine where Peter wrote the lead story about Moog. We instantly got into the Voyager XL and how it doesn’t make any sense and how awesome it is. I met the Micah Frank from Puremagnetik who apparently I had some emails correspondence with in the past but forgot. Sorry Micah! I briefly met Julie Covello (DJ Shakey) from Warper and we moved to the panel room. We decided to each chat about the one thing that’s blowing us away these days. Peter chose Pure Data and explained in other words it’s the code he’s got a passion for. That it can be on his old desktop machine or his phone and it’s been with him a long time. He’s pure geek for sure! Julie picked SoundCloud and YouTube. I didn’t even consider a non-tangible object so props to her because I think we all spend more time in Social Media than making music (shame on all of us!). I thought her pick was a right on. Micah picked Renoise the old school Tracker that was recently updated. I made the obvious choice to everyone that knows me… iPad! What was unexpected is upon polling the crowd we found that only two people there owned iPads besides me. I showed off iElectribe, SynthPond and SoundPrism. We had a short Q&A where we learned Micah translates earthquake data into sample packs. Yep… he’s a geek too. Propellerheads let me give a few shirts and hats away and it was a wrap. Thank you Jo-Anne for inviting me I enjoyed it greatly!

I will be speaking on a panel with Peter Kirn (Create Digital Music), Micah Frank aka Kamoni (Sound Designer & Founder of Puremagnetik), and Julie Covello aka DJ Shakey (DJ, Creator & Promoter of the Warper Party, Music Collector) on Saturday, September 25 at the SAE, 1293 Broadway, 9th Floor, New York NY 10001.

The IMSTA FESTA is free and should be good fun and of great interest to anyone who reads this blog. It’s a pro-audio manufacturer get together and panel series. It’s from 11:00AM – 7:00PM. Some of the exhibitors include Ableton, Arturia, Bias, SSL, Celemony, IK Multimedia, Image Line, Native Instruments, Pianoteq, Propellerhead, Rob Papen, Steinberg and Waves.

UPDATE: Over 1,000 people are registered. Come on down!

“IMSTA FESTA, a celebration of music software is coming to the heart of New York City. The First IMSTA FESTA started in Japan where it was highly successful for technology companies, producers and hobbyists alike. IMSTA FESTA brings a collection of the top audio technology companies together in an environment where they can interact with music makers face-to-face. If you use music software you will benefit from this event in a number of ways.” – http://www.imsta.org

Someone posted one of my first releases on my Facebook wall so I thought I’d share it here and tell you how it was created. Amazingly this was produced in 1992 (18 years ago!). Back then you could have actually owned all the techno releases available. Disintegrator was a partnership between myself and John Selway. We both owned Roland TB-303s and you hear them both on this track. You also hear my Roland TR-909 being distorted through a small 10 channel boss mixer. The mixer was brown and plastic. I wish I could remember the model number. It looked like the mixer you found on Tascam 4 Tracks of the time albeit without the cassette. The sample “Lock on Target” was from a large silver toy guy I purchased at Toys R Us and hacked and line-out into it. We used to bring the gun live (and all the 303’s etc…!). The only other sound you hear is a little bass pattern from a Roland Juno-106. I think what makes this song still work today is the arrangement. We played live as much as we could and to this day that’s a large part of what it takes to make good music.

The video below is the B-Side called “Dark Black Ominous Clouds”. It also uses two TB-303s and Roland Juno-106. However, the rest of the sounds are samples coming out of an Akai S-950. The vocals are from a black and white movie about schizophrenia. Everything was mixed on a Mackie 1604 with some added delay from a Korg SDD-2000. There are some great photos and an article on the SDD-200 here: dancetech.com/sdd2000. Both songs were recorded at SUNY Purchase where I lived down the hall from Selway.

“The SDD-2000 Sampling Delay was one of those great early digital fx processors all the Japanese music corps churned out in the 80’s using the newly arived affordable chips the 80’s ushered in. The SDD-2000 is most famous for being used extensively by The Edge from U2 on every album from The Unforgettable Fire onward. It is still in his rack today, 20+ years later.” – dancetech.com

Today is my birthday but today I have a gift for you. It’s one of my new songs that will appear on my next album. Feel free to copy and share it. In fact, I hope you help me spread it around. The song is called “Born this Way”. Here’s the official stuff:

Written & Produced by Oliver Chesler. Published by Things to Come Records/Basart Music Publishing B.V./Strengholt Music Group. Out of Line Music, www.outofline.de, Masterhit Recordings, www.masterhit.com, Things to Come Records, www.thingstocome.com